At Parachute Media, we like to foster an environment where we can share skills and learn from each other…we also like to drink beer and play corn hole. Thus, the Drink & Learn was born.
Have you ever wondered what the Rule of Thirds is…or what the heck telephoto means? We’ve all been wondering the same thing. So, our Creative Director, Kevin, along with the help of our in-house photography wizard, Adam, recently led a Friday afternoon “Drink & Learn,” opposed to the more commonly held “Lunch & Learn.”
Any employees who were interested had the chance to get in a room and learn from the best. Kevin and Adam took everyone through all those random buttons on a camera that you never really knew what they did. They also took us through the different settings, the exposure triangle, and all the things that affect depth of field
Here’s a recap of some of the things we learned:
The Exposure Triangle
The three things that affect Exposure are ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. What in the world is aperture you ask? Well, it is the setting that controls the amount of light let into the camera (or the pupil in the lense for any laymen out there). It’s also sometimes called an ‘f-stop.’
ISO controls the grain of the image…a lower ISO is sharper, but we heard if you’re shooting in lower light, “you may want to bump up the ISO.” The ISO is measured by the ‘Light Meter,’ which is on a scale from -2 to +2, with 0 being the median, balanced number.
The Shutter speed controls how quickly the camera is taking the photo. If you shoot at 1/60, this means the camera snapped the photo in one sixtieth of a second. So basically, the bigger the bottom number, the less time it takes for light to hit the sensor. Sounds easy, right?!
Depth of Field
There are three things that can affect depth of field: aperture, focal length, and the subject-to-camera distance. Here is also where you control what you’re focusing on and which parts of the image are blurred. Remember when we went over aperture before? Well, the higher the f-stop, the more of the image is in focus. Conversely, the lower the number, the shallower the depth of field is (meaning only the thing that you’re focusing on is in focus, the rest is blurred).
Miscellaneous Knowledge Bombs
There are 2 types of lenses, prime and fixed. Prime lenses have a fixed F, and zoom lenses sometimes have a variable F. Oh, and F stands for focal length. Simply put, if you’re using a prime lens, you can’t zoom in on your subject…you have to physically get closer to them. But prime lenses are generally faster and sharper than zoom lenses. It’s a trade-off. Lens types range from wide, to normal, to telephoto. Telephoto lenses have higher F’s (or focal lengths in case you weren’t listening).
The Rule of Thirds means that the frame is divided up into thirds, horizontally and vertically. The top two points where the lines intersect are the most powerful parts of the frame. You will notice important parts of a photo showing up in those areas of the frame. For example, if you’re shooting a portrait, it’s best to get the eyeballs in line with those two intersecting parts in the grid. They say using the Rule of Thirds makes your image most pleasing to the eye!
While our Creative Team has this stuff on lock, we’re always eager to learn from each other! Need photography? Find out more about our services here.